


Revenant

by UrbanAmazon



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Gen, alternate timeline talk, but not in a crackfic way, jeeps are for character development, references to canon character death, references to other terminator movies, sarah’s ptsd, schrodinger's cat as an optimistic metaphor, some harsh language, time travel paradoxes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/pseuds/UrbanAmazon
Summary: Once upon a time, Sarah Connor went away.  It wasn’t until somewhere between Santa Fe and Pueblo, with Dani riding shotgun and a question hanging expectantly between them, that Sarah realized she might not be all the way… back.  Not yet.
Relationships: Sarah Connor & Dani Ramos, Sarah Connor/Kyle Reese (past)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Revenant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SadieFlood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieFlood/gifts).



_revenant [ rev-uh-nuh nt ]_

_noun_

_1- a person who returns._

_2- a person who returns as a spirit after death; ghost._

* * *

Once upon a time, Sarah Connor went away. 

( _fuck but it seemed so long ago. so, so long._ )

It was one thing to be removed from the world against her will. To be locked in a cell for being _wrong_ , and _loud_ , and _angry_. To be told _no, of course not, the world is not going to end._ To be told it was all _paranoid delusion_ , like she couldn’t still feel the metal fingertips grasping for her throat. It was one thing to learn how to wait when there was no help coming, how to be patient when there was so little time, how to be quiet when there was a scream like a siren behind her teeth. To lock everything down, control it ( _just disconnect it_ ) like another weapon, until her own skin felt like a shell, until she wondered if this is what it was like to be _them_. It. Infiltrator. Machine. 

That had been one kind of madness. Sarah remembered it like lenses slipping over her eyes, and how her son… how _John_ had pulled her back from the edge.

It was something else entirely to have her world shatter and die in her arms, and realize that the world hadn’t ended _enough_. 

( _shouldn’t there be fire streaking across a blackened sky? shouldn’t her skin be crisping, flaking into ashes? shouldn’t everything be gone, now?_ )

But it didn’t. It wouldn’t. Judgment Day ( _August 29, 1997_ ) had come and gone as a completely unremarkable Friday, because she and John, they’d _won_. 

And yet John was cold, his eyes gone blank and staring, like his father ( _time repeating_ ). Present becoming future becoming past ( _like fate_ ).

( _but… no fate but what we make, he'd said. Sarah and Kyle, they'd made John, together._

_had she made this?_

_had she--_ )

Time travel really fucked with her head, but it was _nothing_ compared to the sheer, existential horror of being the only one left. Moving forward. Alone.

So, once upon a time, with no one left to pull her back, Sarah Connor went… away. 

It wasn’t until somewhere between Santa Fe and Pueblo, with Dani riding shotgun and a question hanging expectantly between them, that Sarah realized she might not be all the way… back. Not yet.

\---

Dani wasn’t John. 

Dani wasn’t _anything like_ John. 

Well, she was, but she _wasn’t_. The facts tormented Sarah with their banality, like a bit of grit stuck in her teeth or the unfamiliar weight of a freshly stolen gun in Sarah’s hands. Despite the way colours had faded and details blurred over so many years, the differences were stark and grating to the point that Sarah still bristled at all the little ways Dani didn’t _fit_ into the only space Sarah had ever trusted at her side. 

When she practiced shooting with the .357, Dani’s aim tended to drift slightly to the right, instead of slightly too high. Dani preferred singing as she drove the Jeep, instead of listening to the radio. Dani hung back a step at roadside stops to pick wildflowers and tuck them in the Jeep’s A/C vent, like the few wilting petals were worth the precious, dwindling time. Dani smiled and complimented the ammo shop attendant’s hat, wished the food truck cook a nice day. Dani was better at hand-to-hand over guns. Dani didn’t like pancakes. Dani was a grown person, _her own_ person, without a single fingerprint to betray her sculptor. 

Maybe Sarah would have resented Dani, if she let herself the luxury. From birth, Sarah taught John how to hide, how to prioritize _survival_ , whereas Dani was _visible_ , and _loud_ , and she never. Stopped. _Talking_.

“What was it like for you, before… it? Them. The--” Dani flipped her hand loosely, at the gear in the back of the Jeep and the black road spooling out ahead under the noon sun. “--everything. Who was Sarah Connor?” 

“What?” The aviator sunglasses blocked out all but a sliver of colour right at the edges of Sarah’s peripheral vision, a slash of too-bright summer tones like neon bracketing the washed-out horizon. There was a realty listing for a decommissioned silo up by Laramie that could serve as a Resistance bolt-hole ( _if they needed it to_ ), and Sarah had managed to track Miles Dyson, using his mother’s maiden name, to a suburb in Denver ( _because she was sadly out of practice in hunting a program as opposed to a machine_ ). There was a lot of driving left in the day before the rainclouds to the north became a problem, and Sarah really didn’t feel like being chatty, much less--

Wait. What _had_ it been like? What had-- before-- what was the question? It felt like Sarah had always known, always felt the threat of nuclear fire against her skin, burning her eyes as she blinked. Everything before-- “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. 

Shit. Apparently something showed in her face; the too-bright sliver of Dani leaned forward into the field of neutral gray and umber with her elbows on her knees. She’d started braiding her hair back tightly every morning; less mess to stick to her sweaty skin in the summer heat, or fall in her eyes when Sarah told her to tighten her stance and correct her aim. It made her look… not older. Severe. Less inclined to take any of Sarah’s bullshit. “I worked at an automotive factory. Did you know that? Diego and I, we assembled cars for seventy pesos an hour. Maybe that’s a little funny now. We got Taquito - our dog - right after our second day. We both wanted our dad to have someone else with him in the house when we were out. Miss Benito Diaz down the street had three puppies for sale, and Diego and I both brought her fifty pesos, but she talked us into taking the puppies’ father for free instead.” She smiled softly, sadly, and slipped into the Spanish that she knew full well Sarah understood. “Dijo que el cabello de mi padre ya estaba demasiado gris para su edad. No necesitaba el estrés de criar a otro hijo.”

Dani _did_ this, _all the time_ ; offered out a little bit of herself in sacrifice and waited for something in return, and fuck the risk, fuck how she might bleed because of it. It made Sarah want to scream, and Dani knew it. There was only one way Dani would let her plug the leak.

“I….” 

Dani wasn’t John, but--

John had been gone for so long, _but_ \--

Acknowledging that she’d been someone _before_ John, as opposed to _without_ John… it pulled at her stomach like freefall. Sarah kept her eyes trained on the road, yellow and white on black, smeared with heat. The words came slowly. “I, ah… I was. A waitress.” Memories bubbled up against her will, like tasteless chaff. “Didn’t have a dog. I had an iguana.”

Dani smiled proudly, like she’d won something. 

“And then Skynet’s first terminator killed the two other Sarah Connors in the LA phone book, and twenty more people in one night, getting to me. Things changed.” Sarah fought the urge to scowl. She’d made stupid, _stupid_ mistakes that night. Wasted so much time, not believing-- ”Guess I was just lucky my middle name wasn’t Ann.”

Dani’s smile faded, but she didn’t look away. She leaned back in her seat and let Sarah enjoy the roar of the engine and the wheels on asphalt for a little while, like a reward; as if Sarah were a semi feral dog on the side of the road that needed to be coaxed toward civilization.

They crossed into Colorado a little after one in the afternoon. Dani leaned forward in her seat again. “How did you kill it, the first time?”

“Doesn’t matter. Won’t work against anything like a Rev-9.” And it had been an imperfect method, leaving bits behind.

“That’s not what I meant. How does a waitress with a pet iguana end up taking down a robot from the future?”

If she didn’t answer, Dani was just going to offer up another piece of herself in barter. “Someone came back to protect me. Like… like Grace did, for you. John’s father.” The freefall wasn’t quite as bad this time, just a single step’s worth, but Sarah’s chest ached. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say his name out loud. Without John Connor, Legion wouldn’t ever care who Kyle Reese was. Had been. Would be. But--

But Sarah still cared, in a tiny place she’d forgotten still existed under all that ash and tequila. He’d been _hers_. Still was. The ache crawled up her throat. “He was….” Sarah couldn’t pick a word. Young? Intense? Hardened? He’d… Sarah remembered him looking so _tired_ , even though she couldn’t quite remember the colour of his eyes. How long had it been, since she’d thought about Kyle? She still dreamed of him, sometimes. 

“Was?” Dani prompted, gently.

“He’s dead.” 

Dani wasn’t John, in that John had never pressed for what little Sarah could give him about his father. When he’d been old enough to understand the complication of time travel in his parentage, he’d simply accepted that too much knowledge might influence the future, might make him hesitate in sending Kyle back to 1984.

But Dani wasn’t John, so-- 

“Maybe he’s not anymore, technically. He’s… Kyle would be sixteen, by now.” Sarah frowned, fumbling through a bit of math. “Or sixty-one. Maybe both.” It was a stupid thought, and Sarah wanted to kick herself. Kyle Reese, the version that had never known Judgment Day, was alive because he’d never heard the name Sarah Connor, and it was better that way. 

Except that Dani laughed softly, fondly. Her smile flashed white and clear like a splash of snow. “Dios. I love time travel. You, me, John, Grace... it did happen, it didn’t happen, it’s happening again... it’s like Schrödinger's cat.”

“Who the hell is--”

“Schrödinger's cat. It’s something Diego read in a comic book once. It’s a silly story that tries to explain advanced science, but Diego wouldn’t stop finding all these silly social media pictures about a cat being alive and dead at the same time.”

“... wait, _what?_ ”

“It’s like this. Grace came from _a_ possible future, but not _your_ future. What did he call it? Chronal displacement.”

Sarah’s hands clenched around the wheel. She let out a long breath through her nose. If Dani didn’t stop quoting Ca-- quoting the damn terminator out of the blue, Sarah was going to crash the Jeep. “I don’t want to talk about it. We don’t need to try to make sense of that headache--”

“I’m making a point.” Dani was still relaxed in her seat, still in that glowing sliver of daylight at Sarah’s side, but her voice was firm. “Grace was from _a_ future. _A_ 2042, just not _John’s_. Not yours. But his future still _happened_ once, otherwise your _life_ wouldn’t have happened. John wouldn’t have existed at all, if that future hadn’t happened once, out there.”

“... what?”

“ _We_ \- you and I and this world - have one future now. It’s not John’s future, and it might not be Grace’s future, but they both still existed. _We’re proof_ they existed, _that version_ of them… and because they did exist, maybe they _still do_. Right now, we’re changing the way things go, so there’s the chance that both of those futures still exist, or maybe even more of them. Maybe they’re still out there. Alive. In some version of time that we can’t see, and can’t touch, they’re still fighting. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe they’ve won, where they are. Maybe they’re raising their own kids in a world that never saw a Skynet _or_ a Legion.”

Laughter spilled out of Sarah in a rusty bark. “You’re actually talking about alternate realities.” 

“... we are literally on a quest to stop a genocidal AI from taking over the world with its murder-bots, as warned by _actual time-travelers_. Are you _seriously_ rolling your eyes at me? Think about it.” Dani encircled the space between them with her hand. “This, right now? You’ve already _forced_ an alternate timeline into existence at least twice, Sarah. Is there _any_ kind of logic in denying there might be more? That John might b--”

Sarah wrenched the steering wheel over and stepped hard on the brakes. The Jeep skidded onto the shoulder in a spray of gravel and dried scrub. Her breath burned, heaving up through her throat. She hadn’t wept, sitting in a thicket of trees in Texas with her son’s face slipping away through her fallible (human) memory, but now at the very idea that by some fucked up point of view, he might be-- 

She hadn’t wept in… so long, but it clawed at her without any buffer of alcohol or adrenaline. The pressure swelled up behind her eyes until she had to rip her sunglasses off and cover her face against the searing light.

Somewhere. Somewhen. John could be… John _was_ \--

Not _her_ John, but--

Dani coughed closed-mouth against the road dust. She reached over and turned the keys off in the ignition, and let the silence of the empty road press in on them through the Jeep’s open frame. “This is my point. John. John’s father. Grace. They’re all still out there. We’re just… not. We’re here. This is our time.”

“Why do you keep making me _talk_? He doesn’t matter anymore,” Sarah muttered against her damp palms. She rubbed at her face and all its lines, and shoved her aviators back on before the sun could add to the ache. “I don’t matter, without him. Alternate timelines or not, it’s not going to bring John back to life here.” 

“No. It won’t. But he matters to _you_. It’s _your_ story, too. It might bring _you_ back, and that matters to me.” Dani’s voice was firm, but warm - like the touch of her hand on Sarah’s wrist. “I need Sarah Connor. You decide which one.”

And there and then, Sarah _got_ it. Dani wasn’t John, but here she was hauling Sarah back over that edge into the blinding light of being human again. Hell, Dani all but _waved_ that light everywhere she went, connecting, listening, sympathizing, fighting; visible as a beacon for the human resistance as it might need her. 

Sarah suddenly remembered the grit of weathered wood under her hands, and _NO FATE_ at the tip of a knife; a decision. 

Sarah could either choose to acknowledge the folded-over quantum entanglement of existing and not-existing, time that happened, time that didn’t happen, and in that choice she was _still_ the Mother of the Resistance, the Mother of John Connor… wherever he was. Whenever he was. 

Or she could deny it, and stick to this one, where she could be just Sarah Connor. Again. 

Either way-- 

Sarah smiled, rueful instead of bitter. The ache loosened some. She started up the Jeep and let the dull roar wash over her for a moment, with the open road slicing a path through faded plains all the way to the gathering storm clouds to the north. “Pugsley,” she said, and sniffled a bit. The Jeep shuddered as she threw it into gear. “I named the iguana Pugsley.”

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: In the Terminator fandom, Jeeps are for character development. Also, I’ve found it’s just easier to accept all of the variant timelines in this franchise, because actually trying to map them out uses up way too much yarn.
> 
> Also, apologies for the Google Translate Spanish - "She said my father's hair was already too gray for his age. He didn't need the stress of raising another child."
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
